After nearly a year of disappointing results, and almost tossing the card out the window, I FINALLY got some results I am happy with! If you're having problems with this card and its esults, here's what I did:

First of all, here's my specs:
  • WinXP
  • 1.7GHz
  • 512 MB SDRAM
  • 80GB 7200RPM HD, 30GB 5400RPM HD

Following a tweak guide I read on http://www.videoguys.com I moved my swap file to my second HD. SInce I'm running XP I didn't need to upgrade to DirectX 8.1, but if you don't run XP you should upgrade. After that, I got ahold of MMC 7.5, the new version of the software that comes with the ATI card. This software actually comes with the ATI 8500 card, it's not available on their site but it's fairly easy to find on the 'Net. Make sure your HD(s) are DMA enabled.

In the Setup for the TV component of MMC 7.5, use these settings:
  • 640x480
  • Audio = 44.1KHz, 16 bit Stereo
  • MPEG2 w/De-Interlacing and Visual Masking enabled
  • 4 P-Frames, 2 B-Frames
  • Variable Bit Rate = 8.0 MBit
  • Motion Estimation = 100
  • Motion Estimation Search Ranges = 32 Hor, 16 Ver
The results were amazing. After routinely dropping 30%+ frames while capturing for DVD, I am now losing < 1%. I've only run a few tests with other settings (i.e. AVI and MPEG1) with fair results, but the above setup gives me a nice smooth motion and high quality capture. If you're making VCDs then it's not gonna work, since the cap is straight to MPEG2, but if you're doing DVD-R (which I am) it's finally going to give you a capture that's usable.

John D.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Xanadu on 2001-12-12 05:09:35 ]</font>